The Tea Estate
by Penguin
Summary: Parvati and Padma have always had The Tea Estate, where they can go to rest and heal. The time comes when they want and need to bring other people to The Tea Estate, too. Harry - Parvati.


Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author's Note: This story was written as a birthday present for Slowfox.

Author: Penguin

THE TEA ESTATE  
  
The road to the Tea Estate runs between rows of trees with trunks covered in creepers; a long, slow, dusty snake gliding lazily through jungle. If they stand on its back and look straight up above their heads, they can see a strip of hot sky, ragged at the edges by leaves. Sometimes the strip is heavy and dark, its belly pregnant with rain, and it throws a torrent of water into their faces. Under their feet, the road is either dusty or squelchy with mud, and their feet are never clean.  
  
Huddled on a four-poster bed in a country very far from the Tea Estate: two small girls with long black hair and dark eyes. Red drapes are drawn around them; a ruby red bowl made of thin glass is between them on the bed. Their fingers keep moving to it, picking up slippery pieces of mango to push into each other's mouths. Their minds are at the Estate, and the taste of mango helps them find it.  
  
"Oh! There's the Bird with Blue Feathers," Padma whispers, and Parvati sees it at once.  
  
It's perched on one of the bottom branches of the tree by the corner of the house, its tail feathers hanging down so low it would tickle the girls' noses if they were allowed to get that close. A heavy fruit falls to the ground with a thud from a tree near them, and they both laugh. The air is heavy with a rain that hasn't yet begun to fall.  
  
"I wonder why we haven't seen the bats yet?" Parvati asks.  
  
Immediately, it gets nearly dark; a hot, thick, fragrant darkness where the sound of bats moves across the sky. The girls have to concentrate hard for their eyes to catch the black shapes; they move so swiftly.  
  
The mango pieces in the bowl are gone and it's time to leave the Estate for now. Padma slips out through the red curtains and returns to her own dormitory, where the curtains are blue like the long tail feathers of the bird in the tree.  
  
Parvati and Padma have never been to Assam, but their mother has told them about it many times since they were very small, and it seems like a memory of their own. The Tea Estate in Assam is a land of legend to them. It's the home of dreams and wishes, of tales and adventures, of all kinds of fantastic things, and what isn't already there can easily be added by imagination. It's a place of colour, of vivid reds and yellows, of electric, vibrant blue and all shades of green – from the sharp, acid green of lime flesh to the dusty dark hue of tired leaves that hang limp before the rain. The dust is red like the bricks in the cold country where the girls live.  
  
Parvati and Padma have been sent to school, and like all the other first-years who have just arrived, they're frightened, daunted and homesick. But they know they're lucky – they have each other; there's someone with a familiar smell to comfort your nose and a familiar voice to soothe your ears, someone to feed you dried apricots that taste of sun, someone to walk beside you up the road to the Tea Estate.  
  
At night, they share dreams of the Estate, and in the morning, at breakfast, their eyes meet across the Hall. They smile as they both remember hot dust under the soles of their shoes, the smell and sounds of the river, fruit falling from trees and the fragrance of the tea.  
  
As they get older, they find it increasingly difficult to share their dreams. They are no longer content with exploring together and watching amazing creatures side by side. They want to people the Estate but they don't want the same people, and they both want to be the sole heroine of the new adventures.  
  
More and more often, Parvati's hero has black hair, green eyes and a scar on his forehead, and he can't resist her any more than he can stop the call of the birds or the flow of the river. She dreams of kisses, sweetly bitter like milky tea.  
  
Years later, when things get very bad in their real world, peace is restored at the Estate. Life has to have a balance. The twins are growing up and find they must take sides and take risks, because Umbridge's stubby fingers are relentlessly poking around and exposing secrets at Hogwarts, and this is only one symptom of all that is sick and wrong in the world. The Tea Estate helps the girls produce Patronuses. Padma's is a bird with long tail feathers, silver instead of blue, and Parvati's is a mongoose, quick and agile and alert.  
  
When the war comes, Parvati and Padma are energetic and unafraid, and they prove very valuable for their side. They withstand pain and torture better than most, because their mind has somewhere to escape to when the body is racked with pain. The darkness swallows their screams and they stand in the soft mud by the sleepy river, watching bats flit across the sky.  
  
- - -  
  
When everything is over and the serpent has been killed, Parvati goes to see Harry Potter at St Mungo's. Her own sojourn there was blessedly brief, but she still shudders as she enters the hospital. The reception area is as confusingly chaotic as ever, but Parvati knows where she's going.  
  
Harry is pale and tired and his eyes are hard. He has lost everything except his life, and sometimes a life is such a very small thing. He is glad to see her, though, because he welcomes any change.  
  
Parvati places a wide, willow-patterned teacup before him and points her wand at it. It fills with reddish-brown tea, clear and fragrant. She waves her wand again and the surface turns into a kind of mirror, a memory mirror, a dream mirror; the lighter, simpler version of a Pensieve.  
  
"Come with me," she says to Harry. "You can rest there. This will be more effective than any therapy they can offer you here."  
  
Harry is looking at her, sceptical and faintly amused, and his eyes are more alive than they were a mere few minutes ago.  
  
"I'll give it a try," he says. "Hell, I'll give anything a try – anything is better than this." And then he nearly laughs. "Tea therapy! The English way to treat illness."  
  
"Tea therapy is correct," Parvati says calmly. "But it's not very English."  
  
- - -  
  
Harry walks up the dusty road and marvels at the bright colours, the unfamiliar sounds, the complex layers of smells, fragrances and odours he can't identify. The air touches the skin here, and he feels he could grab a handful of it and hold it in his fist. It would slide softly out of his hand, a silken whisper in his palm.  
  
Luminously green frogs are giving a croaking concert in the pond behind the house, but when Harry approaches, the croaking ceases and is replaced by a thousand little plops as the frogs dive from their lily pads.  
  
He sits down and eats ripe, sweet fruit from a bowl that appears at his feet; he swims in a warm pool under a waterfall, surrounded by enormous, dusky-pink flowers. A blue bird with long tail feathers watches him benignly from a rock nearby. It looks familiar, but he's sure he's never seen a bird like this one before.  
  
Rested and refreshed he returns to the drab room at St. Mungo's. Parvati is sitting squarely on her chair with her hands folded in her lap. He sees her more clearly than before. Gold threads are woven into the red fabric of her sari, and the skin of her bare midriff is a rich, shimmering brown. It makes him think of cinnamon, of cardamom, of sweet warmth on his tongue. Her hair falls in a shiny cascade down her back, and caught in it is a dusky-pink petal.  
  
- - -  
  
Parvati goes to see Harry once a week, and she realises he is looking forward to her visits as much as she is. But it isn't until her ninth visit to St. Mungo's, and after his own ninth visit to the Estate, that he asks:  
  
"What is this place?"  
  
And she tells him about the Tea Estate in Assam where she has never been, but still knows better than any other place because it's hers, it's her creation, hers and Padma's, and she feels confident enough about her creation to let him into it.  
  
His eyes don't let go of her even when she stops speaking. He holds her gaze and a strange little smile is playing around his mouth. When he kisses her at last, she can still taste exotic fruit on his tongue, saffron and cinnamon and the smoky bitterness of exquisitely prepared tea.  
  
He smiles into her eyes, and she knows that the therapy isn't only working for him.  
  
"You were right," he says. "I think you've been right a lot of times before, and I just haven't noticed it."  
  
She isn't quite sure what he's referring to, but then his hand brushes a non-existent strand of hair from her face and stays there, barely touching, and she finds there is no need to know.


End file.
